Palegoldenrod

I’ve been here a month now, with my cousin in Santiago. I’ve made a few day trips or weekend trips around - to Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, Cajón del Maipo, Pomaire. I’ve covered a lot of ground on foot, mainly through the city and the areas of Recoleta, Patronato and Bellavista. I’ve been to a few fiestas and made a few friends (both travellers and locals).

When I arrived it was quite warm - walking around in thongs and a t-shirt and still working up a bit of a sweat. Now it is cold - tonight will get down to 2 or 3ºC, and it has been raining pretty constantly for the last few days.

Things I have learnt:

• “Un café expresso” doesn’t always actually get you an espresso. A lot of the time it will just be some instant Nescafe poop
• Time means little here - people frequently make plans at the last minute, or don’t keep plans they have made.
• As a foreigner you can be both liked and hated. Some people will “like” you because they desire a better life, in the west - like in the movies. Some people will hate you because of how rich the westerners usually are.
• I make friends slowly and warily. It turns out that by and large most people I have met are very friendly.
• Chileans (shop keepers etc) will laugh out loud at you when you try to speak Spanish and manage to say something stupid, but they laugh in good humour (not scornfully) and will then spend the next half hour grinning and trying to teach you more words.
• Australians are loved here. “Billabong” clothes are popular, and I see shoes and shirts with kangaroo logos in a lot of places. That was unexpected.
• The Santiago metro system (underground trains) are very clean, convenient (usually a train goes past every 10 minutes or so) and the stations also double as works of art and cultural icons.
• Speaking English with non-fluent non-native speakers screws with your ability to speak it, even if it is your native tongue. Lol.
• Spanish has too many tenses!
• I can procrastinate very well

Right now I’m waiting for my membership for the South American Explorer’s Club to come through, then I am thinking I will go on a short tour of the south (maybe for 2 or 3 weeks) with a tour called Pachamama by Bus. This tour allows me to get off and on as often as I want at any of the stops, and while it is a little more expensive than just booking a normal bus, these guys go to a few off-the-beaten track places, and have a tour guide and assistance with accommodation at each stop. It will take me to Pichilemu, Pucon, Valdivia and Puerto Montt among a few other places.

Hopefully this membership card will come through soon and the weather will be ok. If the weather is too bad then I’ll might instead go over to Mendoza (Argentina) for a few weeks and then come back to Santiago for a short while before heading north.

I’ll be getting some private lessons here and there soon, to improve my Spanish - I need the practice as I think I am getting too comfortable speaking English to friends and family here.

I’ve had a quiet-ish week or more - I’ve had a bit of a cough and cold (which prompted my first exploration of a chemist) and then some relaxing days at home, and I’ve been doing some tinkering in Java, Ruby and .NET here as well which has been good. I want to get out and around more frequently though - the time disappears so fast! I want to have a peek at some museums around the place, as the city has so many and they are usually very cheap to enter.

Anyway, I’m gonna go jam/sing with my cousin I’m well, even if the weather is ordinary. I’ll write again soon, about Beatrice and my trip to Pomaire last Saturday. The pics are already up on Flickr!